how did moody s respond? by saying over the next two years, we may have to devalue your bond rating just like ireland. it s recklessness. austerity has to wait. that s what you saw out of this deal. this president wants to do everything he can to somehow move the needle on jobs, you know, in the next that s the politics, though. joe is absolutely right about the long term. basically, they have so raised the level from which to have to cut. to say we re going to get serious about deficit cutting in the future is really silly at this point. this happened a week, a week after the debt commission figured out how to shave but, mark, you see guys like larry summers and others who say we have to get the balance right. we can t move to austerity yet. we have to keep investing in the economy. this will focus on doing a real deficit reduction program and is significant tax reform. there s a great way to bring the parties together. i agree with the vice president. he said the americ
candy, is to argue that at this juncture with this kind of economic environment, we ought to have a significant tax increase. i don t know the economists you re talking to, but the ones i m talking to are saying raising taxes in the middle of a recession is not a good idea. okay. overall, though, $13 trillion deficit, do you think there is a way to bring down and get rid of a $13 trillion debt without raising taxes? i think that we have a serious problem here because we spend too much. i think we ought to concentrate on the spending side. i ve in fact been encouraged by the comments of erskine bowls who s one of the chairmen of the president s deficit reduction program, a democrat, saying he thinks two-thirds, three-fourths of the problem is a spending problem. that s where we ought to start. could you say categorically that you would never support a tax increase? i can say categorically i don t think it s a good idea to raise taxes in the middle of a recession.
what they re trying to do, candy, is to argue that at this juncture with this kind of economic environment we ought to have a significant tax increase. i don t know the economists you re talking to, but the ones i m talking to are saying raising taxes in the middle of a recession is not a good idea. overall, though, $13 trillion deficit, do you think there is a way to bring down and get rid of a $13 trillion debt without raising taxes? i think that we have a serious problem here because we spend too much. i think we ought to concentrate on the spending side. i ve, in fact, been encouraged by the comments of erskine bowles who s one of the chairman of the president s deficit reduction program. he says two-thirds to three-fourths of the problem is a spending problem. that s where we ought to start. could you say categorically that you would never support a tax increase? i can say categorically i don t think it s a good idea to
taxes, the question is raising taxes. what they re trying to do, candy, is to argue that at this juncture with this kind of economic environment we ought to have a significant tax increase. i don t know the economists you re talking to, but the ones i m talking to are saying raising taxes in the middle of a recession is not a good idea. overall, though, $13 trillion deficit, do you think there is a way to bring down and get rid of a $13 trillion debt without raising taxes? i think that we have a serious problem here because we spend too much. i think we ought to concentrate on the spending side. i ve in fact been encouraged by the comments of erskine bowls who s one of the chairman of the president s deficit reduction program. he says two-thirds to three-fourths is a spending problem. that s where we ought to start. could you say categorically that you would never support a tax increase?
you re not going to be able to actually sustain any sort of deficit reduction program over the long term. so, you know, i agree with the sentiment that david brooks is expressing, but, you know, first and foremost, this should be about jobs, i think, for any political party. yeah. but how do we reining in spending, worry being our debt, is that something our country can t handle conceptionally, john heilman? it is a hard thing. i remember a decade ago in the wake of ross perot, people used to think the way to animate this concept is generational equity. could we rally young people around the idea that this was actually their future at stake. if you didn t reform entitlements the country would go bankrupt and hurt them primarily. it seemed like a sexy idea. obama had a lot of young people who voted for him. maybe you could get people to rally around this idea. but it s very hard to do what david brooks is talking about, make this idea compelling, make it sexy, make it not seem l